Hot loud and proud - Pigeon peas... again

I have never done a meme before, but maybe that will give me an excuse to post just a few more pigeon pea photos.  red and yellow - about as hot as one can get!
Gosh I just love these pigeon pea flowers, maybe since I havnt been able to grow sweet peas here, just way too hot.  As  child I loved to pick bunches of bunches of sweet peas and arrange little vases throughout the house.  My mom didnt mind as she said the more you picked the more they produced!  I think I am going to start harvesting the dry peas, as some of them are getting eaten by bugs and I want them first!
I hope you are not getting tired of them yet!

For more hot loud and proud photos head off to see the cordelines on Noels blog! 

http://aplantfanatic.blogspot.com/2010/08/hot-loud-and-proud-6.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+APlantFanaticInHawaii+%28A+Plant+Fanatic+In+Hawaii%29

 From there you can see links to many more.

Oak leaf croton

thie crotons are so happy to be released of the crowding heleconias all around them and are really strutting their stuff.  I just love how the new leaves forming are such a different colour, but you can see the shape evolving.

Pineapple in all its forms

Grower Jim just posted an informative article about pineapples, and I had spent yesterday out in the garden between rainshowers looking at the different forms of pineapple I have in my garden!  Pineapples must be the theme of the day!

It was a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my pinepple plant had at last decided to set fruit, and yesterday I noticed it is growing in size.  This is the type of pineapple that has less spiny leaves, and some people say it does not have as much flavour. I am just excited to have something to show for all the years of planting pineapple tops into the soil and waiting and waiting, with nothing to show for it.......

Since I didnt grow up in a tropical climate I am still in awe of all the tropical fruit and flowers  I can grow in my own garden.

Much more prolific is this decorative pineapple bromeliad.. Ananas nanus.  Talk about spiky leaves!  This has this area all to itself as you dont want to put your hands in the area, they propogate from the base once they have finished flowering and also from the fallen fruit/flower.  Whatever they want, they get, because I am not going to mess with them.

A close up shows the little purple flowers forming around the edge.  You can also see the spines on the leaves.  In fact those leaves remind me of the wild plant called waiti-a-while.  I will have to do a  post on that plant one day.  One day when I am feeling evil, as that can be an evil plant to become entangled with.

Right now, though I am in my lovely garden and closer you will see one of my favourite native ladybugs - they are a brilliant blue!  It doesnt show up so well in this light - maybe they need more sunlight on them.

Elkhorn fern propogation

On the trunk of the lychee tree are a couple of elkhorn ferns.  They seem quite happy there and dont get any special treatment at all.  Occasionally if they look dusty they will get a spray with the hose.

 The leaves are more slender than the staghorn fern, and every now and then I notice a new one forming,

Why do we really think we are the gardeners?   This plant gets along very well without my help and yet I take all the credit!
Sometimes I try to wrap my mind around how totally awesome this world is.
The little things like a plant that continues on with its life cycle.
These are the moments that take my breath away.

Green and white

I love the variegated leaves I have scattered around in the garden and find that the simple combination of green and white makes plants pop out of the shadows under the tree.

 These white lilies fill a dark corner

This little fern has happily spread around the lower areas.

 Then this caladium has just never been particularly happy. I wish mine looked like Meems does at hoe and shovel!  I have cleared more space around so that it can grow.... grow......come on, grow!

 This is a little caladium like plant a friend gave me, and I have put them around the edge of the croton area. they are flopping around a bit now, but will perk up soon and create a nice edging alongside the stone path..

as the weather has been so hot this winter, I am wondering what summer will bring. green and white seems somehow cooling...

I have started my daily swim once again, and the water is pleasant.

I must have blinked and missed winter.

The humidity is still only 50%

and the temp is 30 degrees

Color in the Front garden

The two potted palms in the front never really did very well and one died while I was on holiday.  I re-planted the remaining one into the garden bed, since there is an empty spot at this time of year when the costus dies down.  I am not sure if the costus will stay there, and just come up during the wet season. 

The pots are now planted with this bamboo type plant.  I like the look of it and you can just cut a stalk and put it into the ground or a pot and it grows!

 The area out the front is looking quite colorful - with my peachy colored cannas

 The hot pink bouganvilla

 Pink cordelines

 and a red canna about to burst open

 Of course I do have my token front yard vegetable plant still producing one magnificent eggplant after another!

new plants, free plants, free bromeliads!

Look at this lovely bromeliad! What a beautiful addition to my bromeliad bed!

We took our grandson to the beach and when we dropped him off I asked my lovely daughter-in-law (very much an un-gardener) if I could take a few of her bromeliads. Yes sure, she said, and I brought home two, cut off the dead leaves and gave them a good drink - gosh they look so lovely now, I am sure she wont recognise them! They add just the right amount of colour amongst all all the green.

I  took away the bricks at the back of the bed and moved them to the front, and I think this makes the bed flow nicely.  The bricks will help when the gardeners come to do the edging as I would hate them to catch a rock and have it fling up into their eyes or something. 

 I need to add a few more rocks, but this is not such a pleasant job. If you tip them out they get caught up in the leaves, in which case you have to reach in amongst all the spines to get them out.  If you try to reach in underneath and lay them out they get you too... either way it is a spiny business!

I have noticed a few amaryllis flowering around town - so I am holding thumbs that mine will be blooming soon, and anticipating how wonderful this bed will look when they flower.  For all the changing around this little corner of the garden has had, I am at last happy with it! ............except for the fact that I really think I need some sort of path alongside - the grass does not like to be walked on every time we go around the back, which is often.
so on to the next project, why did I think I was done? :)

True happiness in the garden

"It is when you stop wanting things out of your control ........... that you can be truly happy"

 I read this in an article, and then went back and read it again,
 and again.  
 I will never have one of those huge gardens with a water feature, or rows of concrete arches repeating one after another to create a wonderful symmetry.  Heck no, I hardly have room for more than one or two of anything.  Planning and planting this garden was fun and kept me busy and gave me reasons to post on my blog every couple of days. That creativity kept me on a gardening high, but now the work has plateaued, now is the time to just step back and enjoy the fruits of my labour.
I have my little rainforesty area, just a couple of fan palms and a tree fern, but it is a forest in its own way.

the fluted fan palm loves its location against the fence

 and I never tire of watching the tree fern fronds unfold, they start as a furry round ball at the base of the trunk.

 and then they become like magic in the garden.......little curlicues all the way along the branch, unfolding, unrolling and reaching out.....

 

 I love the way the sunlight dapples through the leaves, and you know what?......... the light dapples just the same through one set of leaves as a hundred....

I loved my favourite heleconia, the Lady Di,

but when they became invasive in my little plot they had to be ripped out.. so sad, but then again I can grow some lovely crotons in that area, and soon they will spread and fill in this empty space. 

 the crotons are already perking up with new growth in response to the extra sunlight they are getting.

While it grows, my dear hubby and I can quietly sit in the garden swing enjoying the serenity, most of the hard work is done in the little garden of ours, and now we get to enjoy it. Swing..... swing.

.... Mmmmmm.... here I am......truly happy and content in my little corner of the world.

Bromeliad bed

I have been moving a few bromeliads into the garden outside the bedroom window.  There were amarylis there already, so I have not removed those.  It looks quite crowded, but I like the look of the amarylis leaves, and the bromeliads support the leaves.  I will wait to see if the the amarylis flower in spring (a lot of friends in the area  said theirs did not flower either last year).  Not sure if I want the entire bed of bromeliads, or will let some amarylis stay..  I do want to put some sort of stone mulch down as I like the look of bromeliads against stone.
The bromeliads had been looking rather tattered and untidy under the tree, but are now beginning to show some better colour.

this had totally lost its red center in the shade....... clearly they like more sunlight.

this little variegated one has already put out two pups.

Once I cut away some of the dead leaves and put down some stone mulch I think this bed will look nice.  I am glad I moved the bromeliads here, and I think by spring they will be putting on quite a nice show. .

Butterflies on tea tree

The tea tree is in bloom and just buzzing with all sorts of insects and butterflies.

I got a little closer,

 and noticed that they have a bit of blue on their wings

even the underside of their wings is pretty.

The butterflies seemed unaware of me, but there were a few waspy things that buzzed me and made me a bit nervous.  Maybe they were just telling me I was getting a bit too close.
These are the only butterflies I caught on film, but the whole garden was abuzz with butterflies.  I guess I need to make more time to just sit quietly with camera in hand observing them. 
 Stop and watch the butterflies....

I looked this butterfly up and it seems they are called the Varied Eggfly and they mostly seem to be males.  the female has a little orange lower down on the wing.
http://www.ozanimals.com/Insect/Varied-Eggfly/Hypolimnas/bolina.html
I think I have seen the female before and thought it was a different species. 

My grandson came to visit and played with a caterpillar and we told him how that would one day turn into a butterfly, but I think at the moment it is all a bit beyond his comprehension. I also got a cuddle with my newest little granddaughter...mmm.

Irrigation

For just over a year I have watered with soaker hoses - the rubberized hoses that have weep holes all over.  I got them on special and they must have been quite old then as they have rapidly deteriorated, and one section had a lot of areas that had been repaired with electrical tape.  Then it began to kink and break, so I knew something had to  be done.  I found some deep irrigation spikes on the clearance rack in Bunnings, our big hardware store down in Cairns, and snapped them up. 

I didn't have a very clear plan of what I was going to do, but figured that since I got the spikes regularly 10.00 a box for 2.00 a box, I was well on the way to creating a thrifty long lasting irrigation system.  While digging out the heleconias I had removed all the remaining weed mat (something I will never use again!) and also the broken pieces of soaker hose.  Thinking I needed to buy some irrigation pipe at some stage to join all the spikes together I sat down to work out what else was needed to get the system working.  Lo and behold I discovered it would work with some of the excess hoses my neighbour had given me!  Wow! 

 I poked holes in the ground and measured the distance to the next spike and then hubby would attach it and pass it back to me, and soon we had the hose snaking around and the spikes buried deep next to the bigger plants.  Watering right at the roots, just exactly what I needed! This system is designed  to flow from a  water tank - would I love one of those! - but I attach the hose to a joining T and it flows off in all directions and seems to be working perfectly.   I buried the hose under the paths where needed and once I add a layer of mulch you wont see the hose, so it will all seem to be working like magic! 

The soaker hose off to the the left of the tree still seems to be functioning OK, so it will be interesting to see the difference in watering systems on either side, since they will both be watered for the same amount of time.

Red and yellow

It seems as though red and yellow were the color theme of the day today.  I have some volunteer daisy bushes and moved them out to the swimming pool area alongside the cordelines - think they will look good.  there -  red and yellow. I was going to take a photo, but there was quite a lot of wind and they looked really sad out there, so I am not at all sure they will survive. 
The weeping tea tea tree is in bloom and there are so many little insects buzzing around.  Some bigger insects too that buzz me anytime I forget and get too close!  I noticed a butterfly and ran to get my camera - what colour was it - red an yellow of course!  These are called union jack butterflies and are one of our more common butterflies.

The vegetable garden got a good weeding, and the paths are now clean, I think I must really get some mulch soon.  In November the council has a weekend where taxpayers can get free mulch - cam I wait for then?  The price is right.  I have been using my compost as mulch and it is working well, I drag it out the bottom of my bin as soon as it is ready (sometimes even before, as I have read that in the tropics that is fine, and that seems to be working for me.)  at the moment we are shredding lots of lychee leaves to add to the compost bin along with cuttings and kitchen scraps, and also I have another bin just for leaf mould.

I left a few pigeon pea plants and they are flowering profusely - surely I will get some peas soon!  What colour are they?  well, red and yellow of course  :)

I  love the flowers and would grow them just for the flowers, but they also add nitrogen, and hopefully some produce eventually! Multi-use plants!

Aren't they just beautiful?